Svíčková – a Czech classic

It is perhaps the best-known Czech dish: svíčková, a beef roast with
creamy vegetable sauce, served with dumplings. It can be found on the menu
of virtually every Czech pub. This month in Czech Life, we take a look at
this traditional dish, what makes it so special and find out if Czechs are
still cooking their country’s classic meals at home.

You can find similar versions of most dishes that are considered staples of
Czech cuisine elsewhere, too, for example in Bavaria or Austria. The
nations that used to be part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire share a very
similar cuisine. It’s heavy on rich dishes that Czechs consider their
own, such as pork knee or goulash, with dumplings a ubiquitous side dish.
Though much of what is considered typically Czech is indeed typically
Austrian or Bavarian or Hungarian as well, there are a few meals that can
only be found in the Czech Republic.

Svíčková
Pavel Maurer is a self-proclaimed “lover of good food” and general
expert on all things culinary. I recently met him at Prague’s Slavia
Café in my quest to find out if there is such a thing as a Czech national
dish.

“I did ask some 60 chefs from the Czech Republic, about four years ago,
by mail, if they could name the one food which they feel is historically
typically Czech. I received many answers, but they were very varied. And I
had expected really simple answers. We’re in a country that is a crossing
between many countries. You can have goulash, which is originally from
Hungary, you can eat dumplings, which we say is typically Czech, but in
Bavaria, the locals will tell you it’s typically Bavarian. There’s only
one food that you cannot find in any other countries, which is svíčková
sauce, or in English: cream sauce with beef fillet.”

As with many classic meals, svíčková is surrounded with myths. When I
asked about the provenance of the word “svíčková“, I received two
very different answers. Eva Brejlová, a home cook and food writer, said it
describes a cut of meat.

“Svíce in Czech means candle. The shape of the beef tenderloin that
you use for the meal is similar to a candle, so that’s why it’s called
svíčková.”

Pavel Maurer had this to say:

“Whenever someone orders svíčková, they are referring to the sauce,
not the type of meat.”

Food writer Evan Rail, when asked about the origin of the name, was able
to reconcile the two viewpoints:

Evan Rail, photo: www.genx40.com“Well, it’s an interesting thing, because svíčková itself means a
cut of meat, tenderloin, but it’s come to mean a kind of sauce. So when
you say svíčková, you’re really talking about the sauce, not the meat
itself.”

So is svíčková the national Czech dish? Evan Rail again.

“For me it’s definitely one of the touchstones of Czech cuisine.
It’s the dish that I introduce foreigners to when I bring them to a Czech
pub or restaurant. It’s the dish that I think of as the most Czech. The
Czech goulash is another one of those and you could probably argue that
Moravský Vrabec or Španělský Ptáček, all those small but well-known
dishes, are also very Czech but for me, svíčková na smetaně is probably
the greatest Czech dish.”

Eva Brejlová, whose culinary interests focus mostly on her homeland’s
traditional cuisine, recently cooked a svíčková for me and a few other
guests. Before we got to cooking, I asked her about the actual recipe.

“I think it’s because for this, you do not need to use any special
ingredients, anything that you’d have to hunt down and buy, like
lemongrass. You only use ingredients which are actually from the Czech
Republic.”

During the two hours that the beef was in the oven, Eva checked on the
meat every 30 minutes. I asked her: Is making the dish a really involved
process?

“It is a long process. This isn’t a quick meal. If you make it, say
on a Sunday, you need to be aware that you have to get up at 8 in the
morning and start preparing it.”

Maybe this is why the best cooks of svíčková are Czech mothers and
grandmothers. At the svíčková dinner that I was invited to, another
guest, Eva Kopečková, was pretty certain about who makes the best
svíčková.

“I have to say that my grandma on my father’s side made the best
svíčková, she makes the best svíčková in the world, I can say.”

Eva Kopečková may not have had Evan Rail’s mother-in-law’s version.

“My mother-in-law still makes it at home, and it’s the best version of
the meal I’ve ever had. It’s very sweet, very rich, and it tastes more
like a custard or pudding than like a cream sauce. It takes like dessert
rather than like a main course.”

Eva Brejlová thinks that superlatives abound when it comes to cooks of
the dish.

“I think every family has their own recipes because it is such a
traditional dish. And every Czech woman is considered to have the best
svíčková ever.”

Although most people I asked about the dish started rhapsodizing about
their mother’s or grand-mother’s version, few seemed to still be
cooking it at home themselves. Is home cooking of Czech traditional dishes,
which are often heavy and quite time-consuming to prepare, something that
is dying out?

Food guru Pavel Maurer says it’s definitely not a trend right now.

“People don’t want to spend hours in the kitchen cooking these dishes,
like they used to. What I’ve been seeing, especially with the younger
generation, is that they like to cook at home, which I find very
interesting, but they like to try different exotic foods. They like to make
home-made sushi, or make Thai, Vietnamese, Chinese food. Italian food is
very popular in this country. But the majority of those dishes are really
quite simple, so you don’t have to spend a lot of time cooking them. But
our food, and also for example French cuisine, is very time-consuming to
properly prepare and I don’t think that’s a trend at this time.”

Eva Brejlová believes that Czech cuisine has also gotten a bad reputation
during the Communist era, when you would find poorly executed versions of
Czech classics everywhere.

“I think that the Czech cuisine has been very much damaged by the
history and our recent past. As a child, we had Czech meals, but mostly in
school cantinas. It was total rubbish. We have a term for it: Uho, which
was a universal brown sauce served with almost everything. And that really
damaged the Czech cuisine. People think of Czech food is too fatty, but
it’s actually not. I think people would enjoy Czech food if it was served
in a good quality.”

Outside of Czech homes, Czech classic cuisine and well-executed versions
of svíčková seem to be something that is making a comeback in pubs and
restaurants across the country. Food writer Evan Rail says that the
regional cuisine is definitely reappearing.

Svíčková“I think people at home are very interested in cooking traditional
Italian recipes, learning how to cook Thai or even Vietnamese food. And
that’s wonderful. But you are also starting to see more, even high-end
restaurants in Prague, where dishes cost 500 to 700 crowns, serving classic
Czech dishes, recipes by Magdalena Rettigová and other great chefs of
Czech cuisine and maybe in the future we’ll see more people at home
cooking Czech dishes.”

And Eva Kopečková hopes this will happen as well.

“Well, I hope so, because right now everybody is cooking international
food, like Mexican, Thai and Indian food, and I think that Czech people
should know how to cook their own food instead of being able to cook
international cuisine.”

Reviving regional cooking is something that is very dear to executive chef
Václav Fríč who teaches at the Prague Culinary Institute.

“Of course people today want to eat healthy food and so on, but I think
the entire country is craving one thing: the food that grandma made,
comfort food, not some sort of pasta dish or other modern stuff. And all
over the world, what I call the adult boys of the cooking scene are turning
back to cook their traditional, regional food, be it Brazilians or Italians
or us here in the Czech Republic.”

As far as comfort food goes, svíčková definitely occupies a special
space in the heart of most Czechs. At least it was the meal that most
people named when I asked them the following question: